Bert and Ernie Come Out in the New Yorker

No, not even Muppets are spared in our culture war. Above is the cover of the new issue of The New Yorker.

“It’s amazing to witness how attitudes on gay rights have evolved in my lifetime,” said Jack Hunter, the artist behind the cover. “This is great for our kids, a moment we can all celebrate.”

Then again, in response to an 2011 online petition calling for Bert and Ernie to tie the knot, the Sesame Workshop’s Facebook page offered this statement:

“Bert and Ernie are best friends. They were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves. Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics…they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation.”

From nymag.com: Like all things, it has elicited strong and wildly varied reactions. BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post both call the cover "amazing." But June Thomas at Slate says it's "a terrible way to commemorate a major civil-rights victory for gay and lesbian couples," because Bert and Ernie are not actually gay.

"Ernest & Bertram" -- a 2002 short film by Peter Spears. Some people feel the New Yorker cover is based on this short.Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TeNdsoCIgcFlavorwire's Tyler Coates contends that the magazine is "belittling the decades-long — hell, millennia-long — fight for equal rights by needlessly sexualizing a pair of puppets." Coates suggests that The New Yorker could have used a photo of an "actual gay and lesbian couple," perhaps even of Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer, the lesbian couple at the center of the DOMA case. Not only does The New Yorker not put photos of actual people on its covers, but we think this suggestion misses the point.

You could replace Bert and Ernie with a drawing of a famous real-life gay couple, or even an anonymous gay couple whose sexuality is communicated to the reader. But to have a closeted gay couple lends the image deeper meaning: In an intimate moment in the privacy of their home, away from the public eye, they feel heartened that society is finally coming around to accepting them for who they are.

Because of the inherent nature of closetedness, there aren't many instantly recognizable closeted gay couples out there. Bert and Ernie — as silly as it is to sexualize them — happen to be one of them. That, to us, is why they're on the cover, and why it works.

Uh Sesame Street tackles adult issues fairly often, you must have missed the recent news about them preparing material to help kids deal with having an incarcerated parent. But don't mind me, carry on with your "won't someone think of the children!" / "is nothing sacred?!" routine.

Why do pre-schoolers have to think about sex? This isn't about sacredness, it is about age appropriateness. Not all adult issues translate for children. People, like Mr. Hooper, die. Parents go to jail, rarely, but they do. Parents get divorced. This all can profoundly effect a child's life. What and how adults arrange their sexual lives is not, in my opinion, be something a 4 or 5 year old should have to process. Like, genocide, or abortion, or Quantitative Easing. Sorry. Call me old fashioned, but it is just none of their business.

It ISN'T about sex. It's about RELATIONSHIPS. There's goddamn billions of kids shows that show mommy and daddy being married, yet somehow sex doesn't come into that equation, despite the fact that they have kids and may make the occasional joke that only a parent would get.

And how exactly is divorce an adult issue that kids can understand, but two men getting married isn't? How is that somehow so much harder to understand?

Who is having sex? Are you aware there have been straight married couples on Sesame Street before and -shockingly I know - never once did they behave in any way that went beyond a G rating. Why do you assume that a gay couple would behave any different? Having LGBTQ characters is not about sex, it's about self identity and having role models in the media that you can relate to and allowing them to be seen with their partner being happy and going about their day doing fairly ho hum stuff like cuddling to watch TV together. Being happy with someone and sharing your time with them are things that everyone should get to enjoy and see as something that will happen in their life.

... so, my six year old niece must have totally been thinking about sex when she wrote her best friend (another girl) a letter saying that she was in love with her. (She unfortunately lost said best friend over this because the mom freaked out. Whereas I have seen this sorta thing multitudes of times between a little boy and a little girl and people go "awww cute".)

Fuck you and people like you who have made shit so difficult for people like myself and my niece because you think gay anything is about sex. Fuck you.

You are the only one who brought up sex. The New Yorker certainly didn't.

That and how adults arrange their sexual lives is not, in my opinion, be something a 4 or 5 year old should have to process.

Again: Homosexuality != sex. Gay people are gay even when they are not having sex with a person of the same gender. If you think that homosexual people are all about sex, the same should apply to heterosexuals. Or is sex OK as long as it's a man and woman in the missionary position, but noting else?

And finally: Children already deal with (disregarding your weird obsession with gay sex) the way adults arrange their lives all the time. They see couples in their family and social circle... including gay couples, because gay people exist whether you'd like them to or not.

Do you really think a four-year-old cannot "process" the fact that two adults of the same gender love each other and live together? I'm reasonable sure that a child who is told that his or her two uncles are a couple will not start to try and find out how they are having sex, because children don't care. It's only adults who start clutching pearls and fantasising over what other adults do in a consenting way in their own homes.

Why does portraying a homosexual relationship automatically translate to sex? For that matter, why are gay relationships automatically not "age-appropriate"? Many in Sesame Street's target audience have parents or other family members who are in same-sex relationships. Does that mean their family life is inappropriate?

You do realize that in the South African version there's a muppet with HIV, right? Because Sesame Street is all about TEACHING kids about the world around them, which, shockingly, involves those 'adult obsessions'?

HIV isn't sexuality. It is a disease which is an equal opportunity destroyer of lives. In S.A., where HIV is decimating a generation, teaching about the disease is, it seems to me, very reasonable. But tell me, is the character a prostitute? Is the character in an abusive relationship with a man who visits prostitutes? Is he or she an IV drug user? No. Of course not. Because it isn't necessary for that part of adult life to be introduced to children as young as 4. For me sexuality should be much less important than friendship. That Burt and Ernie are true friends who love and respect each other, without any sexual expectations, is a much, much more important lesson to teach children.